Allowing college students and faculty to carry guns on campus makes everybody safer, right?

If you answered that the way the NRA does, then maybe consider what just happened at Idaho State University on Tuesday afternoon: A professor was wounded when the gun he had in his pocket accidentally went off. According to local news outlet KIDK, the professor (who had a concealed-carry permit but hasn't been identified at this point) was in the middle of teaching class when he literally shot himself in the foot:

Around 4 p.m. Tuesday, Public Safety received a call about an accidental discharge of a concealed weapon in the Physical Science building. A student said the gun went off in the middle of the class.

Police said the small-caliber handgun was in the professor's pants pocket and was not displayed at any time. They said the professor was able to leave of his own accord. He was treated and released from the hospital.

In March, Idaho Gov. Butch Otter signed a bill into law allowing permit holders to bring their guns onto public college and university campuses, despite polls showing overwhelming opposition from students and education leaders in the state. As the Idaho Statesman noted at the time, "Aside from perhaps agriculture, the NRA is the most powerful interest group in the Idaho Republican Party."

The NRA Women account—sponsored by Smith & Wesson—has since taken down the tweet.

There's no shortage of grim gun news in the United States, including numerous killings involving children, but there was something particularly disturbing about an incident on Monday in which a 9-year-old girl accidentally shot her instructor to death with an Uzi. The tragedy unfolded at an Arizona gun range near Las Vegas that draws visitors through a tour company called Bullets and Burgers. How on earth was such a child allowed to fire such a powerful weapon on fully automatic, by a person who knows enough about firearms to have served in the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan? See video of the incident below via the New York Times; the clip doesn't show the actual moment of tragedy, but it's plenty chilling nonetheless.

Reactions to the news, as you might expect, have ranged from somber to mystified to angry. But with the story making the rounds on social media, only those latter two applied to a tweet posted on Wednesday afternoon by NRA Women, which is part of the National Rifle Association's Women's Programs and is sponsored by gun manufacturing giant Smith & Wesson. "7 Ways Children Can Have Fun at the Shooting Range" the tweet announced, linking to a recent story that details how kids can get bored with target practice if not properly entertained. NRA Women posted the tweet at 1:51 p.m. Pacific on Wednesday; by about 3 p.m. it had been removed, but not before I and others took a screenshot of it:

The list of options in the article included firing at animal, zombie, and even exploding targets, but surely there was a better time for NRA Women to promote them. Historically the NRA is known for its disciplined and effective messaging. But more recently, as it has branched out to cater to children and women and minorities, America's top gun lobbying group seems to be misfiring, again and again.

New details emerge about callous tactics that fueled anger in Ferguson.

St. Louis County police officers confront a crowd in Ferguson after Brown's shooting. David Carson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/MCT/ZUMA Press

As darkness fell on Canfield Drive on August 9, a makeshift memorial sprang up in the middle of the street where Michael Brown's body had been sprawled in plain view for more than four hours. Flowers and candles were scattered over the bloodstains on the pavement. Someone had affixed a stuffed animal to a streetlight pole a few yards away. Neighborhood residents and others were gathering, many of them upset and angry.

Soon, police vehicles reappeared, including from the St. Louis County Police Department, which had taken control of the investigation. Several officers emerged with dogs. What happened next, according to several sources, was emblematic of what has inflamed the city of Ferguson, Missouri, ever since the unarmed 18-year-old was gunned down: An officer on the street let the dog he was controlling urinate on the memorial site.

The incident was related to me separately by three state and local officials who worked with the community in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. One confirmed that he interviewed an eyewitness, a young woman, and pressed her on what exactly she saw. "She said that the officer just let the dog pee on it," that official told me. "She was very distraught about it." The identity of the officer who handled the dog and the agency he was with remain unclear.

Candles and flowers marking the spot where Brown died were soon run over by police vehicles.

The day brought other indignities for Brown's family, and the community. Missouri state Rep. Sharon Pace, whose district includes the neighborhood where the shooting occurred, told me she went to the scene that afternoon to comfort the parents, who were blocked by police from approaching their son's body. Pace purchased some tea lights for the family, and around 7 p.m. she joined Brown's mother, Lesley McSpadden, and others as they placed the candles and sprinkled flowers on the ground where Brown had died. "They spelled out his initials with rose petals over the bloodstains," Pace recalled.

By then, police had prohibited all vehicles from entering Canfield Drive except for their own. Soon the candles and flowers had been smashed, after police drove over them.

"That made people in the crowd mad," Pace said, "and it made me mad." Some residents began walking in front of police vehicles at the end of the block to prevent them from driving in.

A woman prays at the site on Sunday, August 10, where Michael Brown was killed the previous afternoon. J.B. Forbes/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/AP

A spokesperson for the St. Louis County Police told me that the department was unaware of these incidents; he added that complaints should be submitted to the department's Bureau of Professional Standards.

St. Louis alderman Antonio French, who was on the scene that night, tweeted videos and photos including one of the mangled memorial:

Several sources in Missouri government and law enforcement insisted to me that some criticism of the police response to the unrest has been overblown. Multiple agencies quickly responded to the chaos: "We'd never had such a blatant incident like this," one person told me. "It just went over the top."

But others, including Rep. Pace, said the problems ran so deep that they continued even after Gov. Jay Nixon stepped in and put the Missouri Highway Patrol in charge. On the afternoon of August 19, Pace and her colleague Rep. Tommie Pierson, whose district abuts hers, were standing near the McDonald's on West Florissant Avenue, observing a group of about 100 protesters marching down the street. There was a strong police presence but the atmosphere remained peaceful, Pace told me, and their goal was to mediate between their constituents and law enforcement. Police officers approached and ordered the crowd to keep moving. A female Missouri Highway Patrol officer confronted Pierson, reaching for her mace.

"Are you getting ready to mace me?" Pierson asked in disbelief. The officer backed off after Pace explained to another cop who they were.

"It's bad when you don't have any respect for anybody," Pierson told me last week. "Even now that's still going on: 'You do what I tell you, or I'll mace you, I'll shoot you, no questions asked.'" (The Missouri Highway Patrol did not respond to a request for comment. Later that night a police officer from another agency was recorded pointing a semi-automatic rifle at nonviolent protesters and threatening, "I will fucking kill you, get back.")

Brown's killing and the heavy-handed response to the protests were seen by many in the community as "a declaration of war."

Throughout the conflict in Ferguson, certain police tactics clearly helped escalate the long-simmering tensions in a city with a majority black population and mostly white power structure. One state official told me that people in the community saw the way Brown's body was handled as a deliberate act of intimidation, echoing the slavery era, "when somebody was beaten or lynched and they made everybody come out and watch." With regard to the Ferguson police force, this official added: "They have an 'us against them' attitude, and they care nothing at all about the people who pay their salaries and that they have sworn to serve and protect."

Darren Wilson, the officer who killed Brown, made his home in Crestwood, a suburb about 17 miles from Ferguson whose population is 94 percent white. The Washington Postreported that prior to serving on the Ferguson police force, Wilson served in the neighboring municipality of Jennings, whose police department was so plagued by racial tension and excessive use of force that the city council disbanded it in 2011. It should come as little surprise, one Ferguson community leader told me, that Brown's killing and the heavy-handed response to the protests were seen by many as "a declaration of war."

The thinking behind that response—among Ferguson police as well as the other agencies called in for assistance—has largely remained obscure to the public. One Missouri official with ties to Ferguson told me that fears about widespread looting appeared to play a role. Though it drew little notice beyond St. Louis media, in the first couple of nights after Brown's death sporadic looting and violence occurred well beyond Ferguson, in south St. Louis and in a shopping mall in Richmond Heights.

Looting elsewhere in St. Louis and a jump in gun sales put police on edge.

"I think that gave an impression that it was going to happen everywhere and the police need to react accordingly," the official said. Gun sales in St. Louis also jumped. But a crucial factor in the police response, in his view, was that "a lot of them are not adequately trained. They've got an extraordinary situation that they're put into, and what do they know? They know force." Then add in the military gear that police departments have received since 9/11—"stuff that was produced for Iraq or Afghanistan." (A person involved with the special operations division of the St. Louis County Police Department gave me a more positive assessment, noting that despite several nights of violence, nobody was seriously hurt or killed in the police response.)

Charles Henson, a former member of the Ferguson-Florissant school board, suggests that while police made mistakes, some unfair criticisms have been piled on. "A lot of people got very angry about the officer being put on paid leave while the shooting is investigated, but I think that is just following protocol," he told me.

"The real hope now is that a light has been shined," Henson added. "There is a lot of work to be done in this community, and if folks in the city government feel that there's not an issue with regard to bias and race, then we've got a problem. Because that's fuel for another situation like this to happen again, and we can't take another one of these."

"Our approach has always been to follow local laws, and of course, we will continue to do so," Target said in a statement Wednesday. "But starting today we will also respectfully request that guests not bring firearms to Target—even in communities where it is permitted by law."

Still reeling from its disastrous failure to secure customers' personal data, Target leaders "were really nervous" after the gun issue emerged, a person with direct knowledge of the company's discussions about it told me. "This was the last thing they needed." Still, the company endured weeks of negative attention on the issue, even as Texas authorities and one of Target's corporate strategic partners made clear that Target was trying to stop the guns from coming in.

Target joins a growing list of corporations—including Starbucks, Jack in the Box, Chipotle, Sonic, and Chili's—that have reacted to demonstrations by open-carry activists by announcing that they don't want people carrying guns on their premises.

Whether open-carry activists will comply with Target's request appears to be an open question. One of the first to comment on Target's posted statement was Kory Watkins—a leader of a Texas open-carry group that's conducted provocative demonstrations, used disturbing intimidation tactics against women, and harassed a Marine veteran—who said he plans to pack heat at Target "today and tomorrow and whatever days I want."

Carrying rifles on display in public is legal in Texas, although regulations governing Target's sale of alcoholic beverages forbid guns on their premises, and armed patrons who don't leave upon request could be subject to criminal trespassing charges, according to the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

The retailer has a gun problem on its hands, and now it's spreading beyond Texas.

A battle over gun politics that first put Target in the crosshairs in Texas has begun to spread around the country. Over the past week, several people have openly carried handguns into Target stores in Virginia and Oklahoma and posted pictures of themselves on Target's Facebook page, using the hashtag #OnTarget and thanking the retailer for "their decision to not ban guns in their stores or lots." The armed people were responding to mounting pressure on Target from Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which has used a social-media campaign (hashtag: #OffTarget) to denounce a string of open-carry demonstrations first involving stores in Dallas-Fort Worth and Corpus Christi.

This week's 2A activists—who included two men and another person who appeared to be a woman—posed with the chain's signature red-and-white shopping carts, Target receipts, and their holstered handguns. Then they uploaded the photos to Target's Facebook page: "#OnTarget will continue to shop Target while they support the Second Amendment," the woman who packed heat inside an Oklahoma store commented in her post on June 21, adding, "#OffTarget is for idiots who think the government can protect them."

The man who displayed his gun at a Target in Chesterfield, Virginia, on June 23 commented that it was "awful" for Moms Demand Action to pressure Target to ban "law abiding citizens who carry for self-defense," adding, "to show my support for Target, I visited my local store and spent some money."

"Who needs an AR-15 to buy legos or baby toys?"

It is legal, with a state-issued permit, to openly carry handguns in Oklahoma. It's also legal in Virginia, where no permit is required to do so.

Target's Facebook page was also riddled with harsh comments from customers opposed to the open-carry activism. In response to a Target post on Wednesday advertising Annie's Cheddar Bunnies, one person reposted the photo of the armed Virginia man, commenting: "Love me some Annie's snacks, but I won't be buying them at Target as long as they allow trigger happy nut jobs like this to wander their aisles armed with deadly weapons."

"Who needs an AR-15 to buy legos or baby toys?" asked another customer, alongside an image of heavily armed men taken in a Dallas-Fort Worth store in March, which included at least one member of a gun-activist group involved in disturbing intimidation tactics against women. "I do not want to have my children near AR-15s where we shop for toys. I will shop elsewhere."

In several communications with Mother Jones since June 16, Target, which does not sell guns or ammunition, has said that it complies with all applicable laws. But the company has declined to say whether it has an official policy on guns, or even whether it might be considering one in light of the rising open-carry issue. However, an official with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission told me last week that Target has since instructed its personnel in Texas to forbid firearms in stores there, as guns on the premises where the company sells alcohol would put it in violation of state regulations. And the CEO of The Honest Company, which recently launched a strategic partnership with Target to sell its eco-friendly family products, told me that his business is "working directly with Target on a daily basis" to find a solution, further acknowledging that "it's a very important issue for the entire country, and for parents and moms."